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Moon Express Signs Launch Contract For Possible First Private Lunar Landing
MarkWhittington writes: According to a story in Space.com, Moon Express, one of the leading contestants in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, has made a giant leap toward its goal of being the first private group to land on the moon. The company has signed a contract with Rocket Lab, a new launch company based in New Zealand, for five launches of its upcoming Electron rocket. The first two launches will take place in 2017 and will be attempts to land the MX-1 lander on the lunar surface in time to win the prize by the current deadline by the end of that year.
No, they won't.
Why? Because first launches *never* happen on time...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
"launch company based in New Zealand,"
Isn't New Zealand a bit far south to be taking advantage of the spin of the earth for launching rockets?
At least for the moon you want to be closer to the equator I thought
Corporations are people so we can't not allow them to do this. As The movie Avatar proved, Repu li and will destroy anything for profit.
Maybe they're planning to collect?
Hey diddle diddle,
The Electron and the fiddle,
The space-cow jumped over the moon.
Space-X laughed,
To see such sport,
And NASA ran away with the spoon.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This will NOT happen. As well, it will be many many many years before man sets foot on Mars (lack of compelling reasons, money, technology...)
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If they didn't use guns then no one would ever pay their taxes. They must, and do, use guns. It sucks that our only choice is to support corporate welfare or get shot.
Uhhhh.. but, there's nothing there to 'destroy'? It's a dead, airless dustball. It's not even geologically active. It's literally there for us to do whatever we want to with it. So long as nobody screws with it's orbit around the Earth, it's all good.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Nixon ordered people to leave trash on the moon while he was the ruler of the US. The Tepublicans will just continue more of that.
The mighty private innovators and job creators took 60 years to just try to *imitate* what government did over half a century ago, and that's only because the innovators copy what was done before??
All glory capitalism! Boo to socialism!
The Federal Government only funded the project. Douglas, Boeing, Chrysler, North American, and many other companies actually did the development and manufacturing.
The biggest difference between then and now is that back then, the government was willing to spend just about anything that it cost to make it happen, and had the purse to do so. Now, non-government entities, be they public companies, private companies, nonprofits, whatever, do not have the financial resources of the Federal Government, so they're trying to scale what we previously did fast an expensively to something that's not as fast to develop, but is a lot more affordable.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A Hollywood movie is proof to you? Liberalism is a mental disorder.
So what? It's an airless, lifeless dustball. There's no 'environment' to protect. Also, anything left behind was left behind because it would require fuel to return it all to Earth, and that just wouldn't have made any sense.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
From the space.com article "Electron is quite an affordable option as far as orbital launches are concerned, with each liftoff costing just $4.9 million. Falcon 9 launches, for example, cost about $60 million each."
It may be affordable if you ONLY want to launch a small craft on its own, but on a pound per pound basis it really isn't. If I'm getting my math right here its almost $15k per pound for one of these launches, compared to about $5.6 per pound on Falcon. It would be as much as a third of the cost if a bunch of small sat launches got together and bought a single Falcon, or piggybacked on a larger satellite launch that didn't max out its launch capabilities.
So you're fine with the Republicans continuing their plan to spew loads of garbage to the moon?
So you support Nixon. Got it.
I'll be shocked and astounded if this actually ever takes place.
A Moon shot is a hell of trick to pull off, even getting into orbit is beyond the capability of most countries, let alone transit to the Moon.
Space travel is hard; it's expensive, it's complex, and space is probably the most unforgiving environment imaginable.
Color me skeptical; I don't think this is going to happen via private industry for another 20 to 50 years at the very least.
I'd be overjoyed to be wrong, though! :)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
" Douglas, Boeing, Chrysler, North American, and many other companies actually did the development and manufacturing."
"The biggest difference between then and now is that back then,"
No, 400,000 people can say they worked on something that went towards Apollo. If you worked an injection molder making the light switches in the cafeteria where engineers ate, then you can say you worked Apollo.
That seems limited - it shows a lack of vision. They need to THINK BIG.
I think the company should be called Planet Express. I even have some thoughts regarding what their ships might look like.
#DeleteChrome
Trading Places is a documentary to some.
I feel like I am watching a real life play out of Rocket Ship Galileo sometimes.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Corporations aren't yet allowed to go door to door with guns to take your money
Patience. Give President Trump some time.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The last probe we sent spotted a whale just laying out on the surface! That's free gold for the taking if we send whalers there!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Corporations are only half of the problem, the other half is the general public. I swear sometimes its like a scene right out of Robot Chicken or Futurama, people complain about pollution, electric prices, gas prices etc and then crank their AC down to 68F on the hottest day of the year or replace a perfectly functional phone with the latest and greatest because they want to show it off. Maybe we can blame the companies for providing products/services without accounting for their environmental impact but if you want to see the idiots who are demanding those products at low prices I suggest most of us find a mirror. And I'd suggest thinking carefully about believing "I'm doing my part", the western world is rife with people who play at being "green" by buying expensive, useless pieces of green-washed garbage (Prius, organic vegetables, etc) that are probably doing more damage to the environment than someone driving a 30 year old vehicle while living in a home without central air.
Oh hey there AC, I found a picture of you on the Internets!
http://bitsocialmedia.com/wp-c...
Now please go play somewhere else, the adults are trying to have a conversation, k?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
> Corporations are only half of the problem, the other half is the general public.
But since corporations are people in the twisted, small minds of the Republicans, corporations are the general public. You need to attack the source of the problem. Just because progressives started the "corporations are people" thing so we could tax profit twice, doesn't mean that it is right. A group of people is not a person.
Again, corporations don't have free speech rights because "they are people". The Supreme Court ruled the people who make up the corporations maintain their free speech rights when participating in the corporation.
In other words, Congress doesn't get to create a group of people called a "corporation", then strip The People of their free speech rights as a cost of participation.
The money buys almost exclusively advertising, which is the "press" part of the First Amendment, the means of mass production and distribution of speech, which governments used to outlaw independent of speech directly, to control opposition to their power.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, the SCOTUS said people don't have rights, but corporations have rights. They took all of our rights. They hate us. Since they are Republican controlled now, they are doing this to us. Doing this to us.
And Nixon hated the Earth.
This would be a much more exciting posting if they were contracting with a company who had already made successful launches.
No, the SCOTUS said people don't have rights, but corporations have rights. They took all of our rights. They hate us. Since they are Republican controlled now, they are doing this to us. Doing this to us.
Weird, I didn't know that monitors could echo. Monitors could echo.
Slightly more risky than adopting an M$ OS before the first service pack?